Industry trackers crowned Apple and Samsung global
smartphone market kings, saying they accounted for nearly half of
handsets sold in the third quarter of the year.
Smartphone
sales climbed 46.9 per cent to 169.2 million units from the same
quarter last year as buyers increasingly opted for Internet-linked
devices instead of “feature phones”.
The smartphone
market was “dominated” by Samsung and Apple, “leaving a handful of
vendors fighting over a distant third spot,” Gartner Principal Research
Analyst Anshul Gupta said yesterday in written findings accompanying a
report.
South Korean consumer electronics giant
Samsung sold 55 million smartphones in the recently-ended quarter and
commanded 32.5 per cent of the global market, “widening the gap with
Apple,” according to Gartner.
Apple sold 23.6 million
iPhones in the third quarter in a 36.2 per cent increase from the same
period last year, Gartner reported.
The Company was
on track for strong iPhone sales in the holiday season with the newest
version of the smartphone rolling out in China and other parts of the
world, according to Gupta.
The Google-backed Android
operating software used by Samsung and other smartphone makers continued
to gain ground in the quarter, increasing its market share by 19.9 per
cent to claim 72.4 per cent of the market.
California-based Apple’s mobile gadget software powered 13.9 per cent of the smartphones sold in the third quarter.
Overall mobile phone sales declined 3.1 per cent to slightly less than 428 million units in the quarter.
“After
two consecutive quarter of decline in mobile phone sales, demand has
improved in both mature and emerging markets as sales increased
sequentially,” Gupta said.
“In mature markets, we finally saw replacement sales pick up with the launch of new devices in the quarter”.
While
Gartner analysts expected mobile phone sales to be buoyed in the
year-end holiday shopping season, they cautioned that the boost might be
tempered by gift-buyers opting for tablet computers.
